. I recently had to drive to Pittsfield to get a window replaced in my car. This is an arduous procedure and took an hour and a half, enough for me to walk around. What I found is this collection of bottles flattened on the road. Notable is the change of scenery from one item … Continue reading
. . Christo died on June 1, 2020. What a man! What a character! In my mind he will keep on wrapping. Bridges, domes, trees, entire cliffs. I saw his spectacular Central Park installation in February 2005 and took a lot of pictures. One was of three clowns dressed in garments whose colors were complementary … Continue reading
. . Every square inch counts. Here are peas, cucumbers, pole beans and lettuce all sharing a single plot. The peas and cucumbers will go up the trellises on either side; the beans will climb up the strings; and the lettuce will mature before being shaded by the beans. There is a flat stone in … Continue reading
. This is the Happy Birthday tableau I made for Carol’s birthday. It exemplifies the “Make Do” spirit of a family in Quarantine. . .
. I wrote this in response to a request by the North-Rhine Westfalia Academy of Sciences and Arts (Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste) to which I belong as an extraordinary member. The Academy ‘s leadership was hoping to celebrate its 50th Anniversary this year, before the plan was destroyed by the Pandemic. Instead, … Continue reading
. . Lila Bujaldón de Esteves, professor of German Literature at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina, whom I met at a visit to this university in 2019, sent me an interesting article, which appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine. It deals with Borges’ fascination with the German language. She also sent me Borges’ … Continue reading
. . My son Ze, a.k.a. creator and narrator of Sploresville, asked for submissions on the theme of Permanent memories, in the form of a (5,7,5) Haiku. I missed the deadline by one hour. Here is my contribution: Saw a house in flames, Just three years old, in the War, Stable of night-mares.
Copyright : Sirichai Raksue . . Recently I was invited to give a Columbia Tedx talk. The theme was “ReVision” — how to address the world’s problems: “This year’s theme invites our community and the world watching to examine the world around us and RE—focus. It demands that we pause and reflect in a time … Continue reading
. A photograph I took at the Orchid Show in the New York Botanical Garden, a few weeks ago. Thousands of little plants floating in a basin. Above it in the picture an area of the most delicate moss. This confusion between the appearance of reality and art reminds me of the work by Alexa … Continue reading
Dear XXXX: . This message relates to your following question: . “Based on both your extraordinary success and unique experiences/perspective, if possible, at all, could you comment whether you agree or disagree that people with talent in the sciences would make judicious decisions in the socio-political realm”. . –The question you raise … Continue reading
. My ferocious competitor in instant fiction, master of the flies and master of cognitive chaos, has changed the rules of the game. It is not to our advantage. We used to be able to make up stories, tongue in cheek, creating an alternative world to illuminate the real one in which we wake up … Continue reading
Above: front page of the Telegraph, an Indian daily newspaper, on January 24. Posted below is the verbatim text of the speech I gave at the convocation of the Indian Statistical Institure on January 23, 2020. It differs from the text in the pamphlet distributed at the event at a few places. One is the … Continue reading
mons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63818412 This is the draft of a letter to Susan Sontag that I just found in my notebook from July 1988. I remember well attending the Summer workshops of the Writers Institute at Skidmore College in 1988, I believe being in Steve Millhauser’s class. Susan Sontag was one of the invited writers on the … Continue reading
Walther von der Vogelweide, a 12th century Minnesaenger, is regarded as one of the greatest German poets next to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I ran into his poems recently on the internet. One of them gave me the chills since it so much resonates with my own feeling nowadays. I’m reproducing here the … Continue reading
. “The literal meaning word Mandala means circle, and circle mandalas are also one of the most commonly available form of mandalas. … Ancient Hindu scriptures depict mandalas as a period of creativity, of powerful existence, and a symbol of deeper connection with the self and the universe at large.” I have been on the … Continue reading
. Aan Zee is a novel I started writing at the beginning of the 1980s. Actually I wrote a short story, and brought it in to be critiqued by William Kennedy when I took his fiction writing class in 1983. Kennedy encouraged me to expand the story into a novel. So it grew over time, … Continue reading
On October 4, 2019 I donated an archive of material associated with Workspace to SUNY Library’s Special collection. With the donation I hope that through open access, the unique period of wild, creative arts performance activities in the sleeping Albany, NY of the 70s and beginning of the 80s will be some day fully … Continue reading
We bought the iron dragon from Paolo in Casole, near Siena, Italy. Paolo is a marvelously gifted artist who works with wood, metal, you name it. Casole is a lively town filled with many art objects. One of Paolo’s giant sculptures graces the square before City Hall. The dragon is actually a chimera, half dragon, … Continue reading
Problems of archiving are being “solved” because you can ship your pictures and movies to “the Cloud.” What precisely is “the Cloud”? It’s a vast network of servers that are spinning continuously somewhere in farms, each consuming the same amount of electricity as a whole town. Why should we worry? “The Cloud” has become the … Continue reading
When the redacted Mueller report came out, there was a singular page (page 18) that was all black, except for the fact that it contained the unredacted word “troll”. This seemed an unlikely word to escape Barr’s busy pen, but none of the Attorney General’s actions made any sense, so the rationale for passing the … Continue reading
